2.2 MILLION UNEMPLOYED AMERICANSMAY SOON LOSE THEIR BENEFITS!

Like many congregations in America, First United Presbyterian Church of Clinton, Iowa is facing more challenges in financing its staff, building and ministries.  As such, in a recent meeting we discussed selling cookbooks as a special fundraiser.  

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Happy New Year to one and all.  Some translations begin the Beatitudes with the word 'Happy' rather than 'Blessed.' But Jesus spoke the Beatitudes in Aramaic. Future and presence are one and the same. Jesus is proclaiming what is.  Thus the word 'blessed' is a deep inner joy here and now.  Jesus is speaking about the nature of the kingdom of God.  We are in the kingdom right now.  The Greek word is makarios.  Makarios is a joy that is untouchable.  Happiness comes from the root 'hap' which means chance.  Malkarios is independent of all chance.  So as the people of God, the Church of Jesus Christ, and the Synod of the Covenant, we are 'blessed.'  A blessed new year to all.

Russ, Synod Moderator

 

RECAP

War on poverty has become war on the poor, and the war on drugs has become a class war, suburbanites against urbanites.  The USA boasts 5% of the World population while legally and shamefully incarcerates 25% of the world's prison population.  The USA foreign policy continues to ignite wars enriching American contractors and corporations, creating and exporting death and destruction. The so-called Arab Spring has become a blood bath, and Christians in the Middle East remain endangered.  Our taxes create and fund war not peace, and our privacy has been forfeited for the illusion of security.  Public officials are openly bought by corporate greed and sold for political gain.  Politicians are routinely tempted by the addiction to buy undemocratic elections.  Public interest is conflicted with personal gain and stained with unethical legislation.  Common good is good only for the bad, and common ground is not leveled but fracked.  Air, water, plants, and animals are polluted to benefit banks that are too big to fail and corporations that are too corrupt to inspect.  Our Defense has never been audited, and their budgets are supremely lethal, never tranquil.  Our lawmakers are protected lawbreakers and with impunity; in office they exercise with law until they are recruited as lobbyists to write the law.  Injustice rules the day.  Our past is adorned with shame, our present paralyzed with fear, and our future is shackled with debt.  American Exceptionalism has become enshrined in our psyche; except that we tend to forget that corruption, incompetency, racism and classism are known whole-marks of this nation we call the greatest democracy and richest economy.

 

Read more from Rev. Raafat Zaki, Synod Executive

 

ST. LOUIS, MO

 

 

MARCH 17 - 19, 2014

 

 

 

 

WORKSHOP TOPICS WILL INCLUDE:

• Congregational giving analysis for your church
• Giving through technology (both online giving and social media generosity)
• Stewardship in small membership churches
• How presbytery teams can train congregations
• Endowment 101-beginning and growing one
• Role of the pastor in Stewardship
• Capital campaigns that work

www.stewardshipkaleidoscope.org

Presbyterian congregations advance diversity and justice in a community struggling to survive.

On July 18, 2013, the City of Detroit filed for bankruptcy. Once one of the largest and most prosperous cities in the country, booming with industry, Detroit has become shorthand for the urban crisis in the United States. In 1950, the city had a population of 1.8 million people; as of 2010, that number had dropped to a little over 700,000. Because so many industries hit hard times or pulled out of the city, jobs have become scarce. According to the US census, one in three Detroit residents lives in poverty.
Over the last few decades, those who could afford to move out to the suburbs-mostly white families-did so. Discriminatory housing practices helped create one of the most segregated cities in the nation. Like a knife through the city, Eight Mile Road divides the mostly white population to the north and the mostly African American inner-city population.